Want to reinstall into smaller partition

Dell XPS i7 16GB, 1TB HDD

I have been trying (for way too many hours now) to shrink the existing OS partition to approx 100GB (more on this later) and have decided to stop beating my head against a wall. No matter what options I choose, it just will not shrink to less than 600+GB.

So I now want to reinstall Win 10 on my HDD, put the OS in one partition, and use the balance for win data files and linux data files (each of these two in their own partitions). Linux will be on a separate SSD and I want to dual boot.

When I do a clean reinstall, will I have an option in that process to make a partition for Win 10 OS (and the two data partitions), or should I reformat the HDD and make the three partitions first and install into one of them (presumably the first?)? If the latter, what software is best for this partitioning?

I do not plan to use Win 10 much but want to keep it alive and there for when I do want it. Given that the Win OS and Win data will reside on two different partitions, how much room do I need for the OS?

any other observations/guidance welcomed.

Not quite sure how to do that, so have just typed the screen data here:

Volume / Layout / Type / File System / Status / Capacity / Free space / % Free

Disk O, part 1 / Simple / Basic / (blank) / Healthy EFI Sys Part /500MB/500/100%

Disk O, part 2 / Simple / Basic / (blank) / Healthy OEM Part / 40MB/40/100%

Disk O, part 5 / Simple / Basic / NTFS / Healthy OEM Part /883MB/459/52%

OS (C:) / Simple / Basic / NTFS / Healthy (Boot,CrashDump,Prim.Part.)/628GB/545/87%

PBR image / Simple / Basic / NTFS / Healthy OEM Part /789GB/731MB/9%

WINRETOOLS / Simple / Basic / NTFS / Healthy OEM Part /750MB/436MB/58%

not sure what all those partitions are for.

You seem to have 524gig used on drive c were is all that going it's a lot of space used and why you can shrink it

Wish I could answer that cause if I could shrink it, I would already be working on the next leg.

Odysseus said:

Wish I could answer that cause if I could shrink it, I would already be working on the next leg.

Well, your first task is to find out what on earth you are using 524GB for on the C: drive. A typical install of 64-bit Windows 10 should be about 20GB with nothing else installed.

You first step should be to look at Settings > System > Storage...

...You can click/tap on System and reserved, Apps and games, Pictures, Music, Videos, Mail, Documents, OneDrive, Other users, Temporary files, and Other to see more storage details about them.

View Storage Usage of Drives in Windows 10 | Tutorials

As I try to answer your question, I first started to look for where the 524GB number came from, and see that I failed to put a decimal in the PBR image numbers. Should be 7.89GB.

Not sure how the 524GB was calculated, but does the above change that number? Thanks

If you are going to do the clean install anyway, select the custom install option, delete all the partitions- Note this will erase everything! Then highlight the unallocated space and click next to let Windows set up the standard Windows partitions. Then install MiniTool Partition Wizard Free and use it to shrink your Windows partition.

If you need to shrink C: partition, it may be necessary to:
- temporary disable virtual memory & hibernation
- defragment the drive
- shrink it
- enable virtual memory & hibernation.